A while ago, Unreal Tournament 2004 impressed me more than I thought it would, with a singleplayer campaign that was more interesting than I expected. I’ve got another game in the series to cover – and sadly not the original Unreal games, but I guess these are the ones that made an impact on most people.

Our Thoughts

So I didn’t really play multiplayer, because… well, I have no friends who play and those who do are probably killers at the game and would overwhelm me way too quickly. That’s fine though, as the singleplayer mode holds up well enough.

Like UT2004, the game basically puts you in a number of multiplayer modes and has you win that to advance the story. In the previous game (and games, it sounds like), this was in an actual tournament – you’re defeating others who are fighting in an arena so the best can go through to the top. Here, instead we get a longer storyline about an alien invasion, tying into the main Unreal games instead. You start off training to get ready after an injury, then get back into fighting aliens. This still uses the tournament setup, which feels a bit artificial at times, but it works as a way of justifying what you’re doing in a less artificial construct.

As a shooter, the game works incredibly well. There’s a large variety of weapons and the bots were difficult enough for me to handle. My team mates got lost (or, I suppose, I did) and the action got difficult to follow because of that, but that’s part of the genre. You focus on your thing and hope it’s enough.

Final Thoughts

While these tournament games lack longevity for a singleplayer focused gamer like me, the storyline in this game is a good attempt at making it more meaningful and giving you more to do and more of a reason to do it. It’s still a bit clunky and artificial at times, but the Unreal engine performs well here and gives you a good game to play.